It’s a fine line, sometimes, between disturbing and enrapturing. Amity Gaige’s new novel, “Schroder,” treads that thrilling line — swiftly, and on tiptoe — for 270 pages. It is impossible to put down.

Or is it impossible to turn away from?

Our hero (or villain) was born Eric Shroder in East Germany in 1970, but after a family-shattering escape, Eric finds himself living south of Boston, a bullied misfit who’d do anything to disguise his roots. In a bid to escape — just for a summer, initially — the 14-year-old fills out a summer-camp application using the last name Kennedy and falsely citing a hometown of Twelve Hills, Mass., “a stone’s throw from Hyannis Port.”

He never claims to be one of those Kennedys. But, he admits, he “did not sufficiently debunk the rumor of himself as a second cousin twice removed.”

It begins as a seemingly harmless adolescent deception, but Eric leans into the advantages his new surname, and its implied Cape Cod provenance, unveils. In practice, “… the name often greased the gears of bureaucracy, making what would otherwise have been dull encounters with bank loan officers, traffic cops, etc., slightly charged, even when he denied any family connection.”

College follows, a career, a marriage to Laura who assumes Eric’s assumed name. They settle in Albany. Here comes a daughter, Meadow, to dote on. His American dream is achieved. But it’s a life built on landfill, wobbly and vulnerable.

Marriage troubles lead to a trial separation, then divorce proceedings and an impending custody dispute. But a court battle would expose Eric’s lifetime of lies, and he’d never be able to see his daughter again.

Recklessness takes dangerous hold. Eric collects Meadow for the court-approved afternoon visit, and asks whether she’d like to go for a “road trip” — first to Lake George upstate, then to Mount Washington in New Hampshire. He doesn’t think of it as an abduction, at least not initially. “It was more like an adventure,” he rationalizes.

Besides, says Eric in an early hint at his deludedness, “we may no longer remember that until the mid-nineteenth century, children and their mothers were viewed as a man’s property.” And anyway, Meadow, innocent, agrees to the trip.

Written from the first person (we soon learn Eric is writing from a correctional facility), the rest of the story is a troubling but riveting account of Eric’s descent into irrationality and his target’s-eye view of the dragnet closing around him.

Despite his criminal behavior, our intimacy with Eric makes his behavior, and this story, more tragic than enraging. Does he love his daughter? We know that he thinks he does. But does carting her across state lines — in a stolen car, no less — constitute love?

Who’s to say? “Schroder” certainly doesn’t give us an easy answer. But it digs deeply, satisfyingly, disturbingly into the question.

Whether or not Gaige, a prodigiously talented writer, has authentically rendered the inner workings of a middle-aged male domestic kidnapper is impossible to know (at least for those of us who’ve never kidnapped anyone). Her clever premise and lucid prose beg to be believed.

In any case, she’s created a riveting tale, at once infuriating, heartbreaking and human.